When Mayor Daley is credited, as he often is, with turning Chicago into one of the greenest large cities in the country, his admirers rarely cite much besides his penchant for planting and a few small-scale demo projects carried out with his support, like the garden on the roof of City Hall. But there’s more to making the city green than prettying up the Loop. The city’s actual performance on environmental issues—confronting climate change, industrial pollution, and municipal waste, for starters—is somewhat mixed.
I’d say another priority is environmental engagement and stewardship. The more we can get residents and businesses involved in taking environmental action to improve their neighborhoods, the better democratic citizenry we have.
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I would also say brownfields and industrial redevelopment. [Brownfields are] all these abandoned properties that already have the infrastructure in place, but it’s this scary, “Oh my god, how much is it going to cost [to clean them up]?” It could be $50,000, it could be $2 million. But when you’re talking about many, many acres in a city like Chicago, it’s a huge opportunity. [The city is] looking at how we package the properties, looking at new technologies for how we clean up the properties. Like there’s a lot more phytoremediation going on—using plants to suck up the crud.
Some of our big areas in it are retrofits for buildings. It’s going to be really key because we know the majority of our emissions comes from energy use in buildings. In Chicago, we know it to be about 70 percent. Studies have shown that for every dollar invested in energy efficiency [in buildings], three dollars are produced in economic benefits. So we’re really looking at this as an economic driver for the city. Here’s an example: F&F Foods on the south side, which produces cough drops and mints. We went in and we did an audit. It was $63,000 for the audit. We looked at all these process technologies they had—cooling systems, etc. And as a result of the retrofit, which cost $722,000, they are saving 11 million gallons of water and $296,000 a year.
I know the city regularly sets out a list of environmental accomplishments. On the one hand the list is long and impressive. On the other, many of the projects are really small.
As you know, there’s been negotiations [between the plants’ owner and the state], and by 2015 and 2017, respectively, they’re going to have to put up or shut up. And they’re doing some amazing things—they’ve got this system that’s going to reduce their mercury [emissions] by 90 percent. Some big huge things take time.
There are definitely some lines in the sand you can’t cross over. But incremental improvements—if you can get the auto industry, which is hurting big-time, to respond, it’s going to be because of the economics. I’ve been in lots of conflicts. But ultimately being able to engage in the conflict and the debate is the only way it’s going to work.
